How Mobile Solutions Can Create Better “Life Moments”

Every day on my morning runs, I pass a small, quaint breakfast café. This morning, I saw a young couple sitting outside waiting for their breakfast and sipping coffee—the perfect setting for a romantic moment. I’ll come back to them in a minute.

With mobile self-service solutions, customers can do more on their own, at any time, while businesses can deliver the information their customers want at just the right time and place.

Virtual Concierges—a digital Jeeves!

A new channel has emerged in the consumer engagement space— known as chatbots, or virtual concierges. You can think of them as automated, intelligent online assistants designed to engage customers in natural flowing, conversational exchanges thanks to SMS customer service that uses natural language understanding (NLU) technologies.

But getting back to our couple at the café. While some might see two people on their phones and assume they simply weren’t interested in each other, these two were actually creating mobile life moments through self-service solutions using SMS and Facebook Messenger. She knows he’s been wanting to see the latest Vin Diesel movie. So she simply texts the movie theater, “When is the latest Vin Diesel movie?” The virtual concierge understands that she meant to ask, “What are the show times for Fast and the Furious 9?” The virtual concierge replies, “Fast and the Furious 9 is showing at 11:00 a.m. and 12:20 p.m.—approximately 6 miles from your current location.”

He’s so thrilled with the plans she’s made that he wants to do something special for her in return. When she steps away from the table for a few minutes, he immediately connects to Facebook and engages with the messenger bot of an online flower shop that he’s used before. This is where businesses can add another layer of personalization into the mix by integrating their CRM or ticketing systems with their self-service platforms. The messenger bot immediately recognizes him from past interactions and orders—and within a few exchanges a bouquet of orchids and tulips are on their way.

Within minutes, a simple outing turned into a memorable life moment with the help of mobile self-service solutions. Maybe our couple even found this little gem of a café tucked in the suburbs of Las Vegas through a simple text to their dining app, “Where can I find romantic café with great coffee?” Thanks, digital Jeeves!